Saturday, November 25, 2017

Deir Aziz (“Monastery of Aziz”) is a site located 4 mi. [6.5 km.] east of the Sea of Galilee on the north side of a wadi that flows into the Nahal Qanaf. There is a very powerful spring at Deir Aziz and the remains of a prominent synagogue that dates to the Talmudic/Byzantine Period.

With photos, of course.

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The question of ownership is a significant one, since it speaks to the wider context of the book’s intended use and potential audience, an aspect of the research on the biblical text which is often overlooked. Within which tradition or for which Jewish confessional congregation was this Bible produced? This is the sort of information that is not usually explicitly stated in colophons, but must be gleaned from our knowledge of the people involved, again relying on the Genizah documentary manuscripts to fill out the picture. ...

So, Codex Leningrad was produced for, most likely, a Persian Karaite, and was subsequently acquired by a Persian Karaite, who sold it to Maṣliaḥ ha-Kohen b. Solomon, Gaʾon (head) of the Jerusalem Yeshiva. Maṣliaḥ was the highest intellectual authority in Palestinian Judaism and ‘Head of the Jews’ (Raʾīs al-Yahūd) in the Fatimid Empire. That such a powerful and senior figure should acquire the Bible strongly attests to the value ascribed to it in its day (today’s critics of Samuel b. Jacob’s work should take note). In addition, evidently its Karaite provenance did not devalue it in Maṣliaḥ’s eyes and deter him from purchasing it.

Ben Outhwaite's earlier FOTM post on the author of the Leningrad Codex (a very old and important copy of the Hebrew Bible) was noted here. Other past posts noting Cairo Geniza Fragments of the Month in the Cambridge University Library's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit are here and links. That post will also lead you to many past posts on the Karaites. Cross-file under Karaite Watch.

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While the relationship between Second Temple Jewish exegesis and early Christian exegesis as demonstrated in the New Testament is universally recognized, the reasons for their similarities and differences are often elusive. Donald H Juel in Messianic Exegesis seeks to unknot this tangled web of interpretation. Juel's thesis is simple: Christianity's origins are rooted in the earliest Christian interpretations of Israel's Scriptures. The difficulty resides in showing how these distinctive interpretations arose. Juel argues that the events of Jesus' life form the fulcrum for the Christian re-reading of Jewish Scripture. In particular, Juel shows how Christian belief in a crucified and risen Messiah guided both the selection and appropriation of Old Testament texts -- texts like 2 Samuel 7, Daniel 7, and Psalms 2 and 110. With the confession "Jesus is the Messiah" as the central claim of Christianity, Juel is able to show the fluidity of contemporary Jewish exegesis while also making the anomalous uses of Scripture within the early Christian community understandable. Christians proclaimed Jesus as Messiah throughout their exegesis and thereby defined their emerging community through the way they read Scripture.

Another in Baylor's new Library of Early Christology reprint series, on which more here and links.

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Published in English.
The patriarch Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi headed the independent Jewish leadership institutions in Roman Palestine at the turn of the second and third centuries CE. He conducted the affairs of the patriarchate with a high hand, was renowned for his learning and behaved like a kind of anointed king. He was also incredibly rich, a consummate politician, and close to the Roman authorities. He made taqqanot (reforms) in the light of circumstances, and tried to cancel mitzvoth (religious regulations), such as the regulations about shemita (not using the land in the sabbatical year), which entailed hardship for the Jews of his time. He was ahead of his times in his humane and liberal decisions. Rabbi completed the redaction of the Mishnah and thus gave the Jewish people the work that is second in importance only to the Torah, although by so doing he put a brake on the development of the oral law. Aharon Oppenheimer attempts to present Rabbi Jehuda ha-Nassi's character and his life as well as examining the significance of his work for his own generation and succeeding ones.

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Friday, November 24, 2017

The Genizah documents are essentially fragmentary. In order to understand the Karaite halakha in these documents in its broad context, one needs to read the extensive corpus of early Karaite commentaries, which are mostly found in manuscripts in western libraries and in the Firkowitcz Collection in Russia. These commentaries are written in Judaeo-Arabic and most of them were not in the hands of the first scholars. Not only that, but the first scholars did not trouble themselves to compare their Genizah documents with the early Karaite commentaries available in their time, and instead they made do by reading late Karaite commentaries to the Bible written in Hebrew in the later Middle Ages, since these were readily available in print. The Karaites that wrote these later books did not, in their writings, present the halakhic controversies of their predecessors.

The first scholars studied the early Karaite halakha in the light of poor remnants of sectarian halakha they found in the Talmudic literature. From 1910 they had at their disposal the Damascus Covenant scroll that was discovered in the Genizah. When and where it was written was still then in debate. Nowadays, of course, we can examine early Karaite halakha in the light of the entire corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Past PaleoJudaica posts noting Cairo Geniza Fragments of the Month in the Cambridge University Library's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit are here and here and links. For many past PaleoJudaica posts on the Karaites, start here and follow the links. Cross-file under Karaite Watch.

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Published in English.
In this study, Michael J. Morris examines aspects of synoptic gospel demonology; specifically, human responses to demonic evil. It is clear that early Christian demonology can be more fully understood against the background of early Jewish traditions. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, there are two fundamental ways by which protection against demons is sought. The first anti-demonic method is “exorcism,” and the second is characterized by its preventative nature and is typically referred to as “apotropaism.” Although many contributions have been made on the topic of exorcism in the gospels, less attention has been paid to the presence of apotropaic features in the gospel texts. Therefore, Michael J. Morris offers a timely examination of apotropaic tradition in early Judaism and its significance for demonological material in the synoptic gospels. He shows how the presence of apotropaisms not only shape conversations about early Christian demonology, but also have broader implications for the understanding of evil, eschatology, and the depiction of Jesus in relation to each gospel.

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“When morning came, there was Leah!” (Genesis 29:25). Could Jacob not tell the difference between his beloved of seven years and her sister, for a whole night? Commentators have long tried to make sense of the story by adding extra details, but perhaps we need to rethink the nature of Jacob and Rachel’s relationship during those years.

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These are some initial impressions, then. Overall, the edition is refreshing in its visual simplicity and some of the novelties such as paragraphing are a nice change. I will still use my NA, of course, for serious work but I expect to be reading the THGNT devotionally in 2018 and perhaps as my new church NT.

The first evidence of a Georgian Christian presence on the shores of the Holy Land was uncovered during August excavations in the ancient city of Ashdod-Yam. Dating to the Byzantine period, a Greek inscription was found on the floor of a 1,500-year-old church, which mentions the date of 292 according to the Georgian calendar.

The Ashdod-Yam inscription is the earliest known use of the Georgian calendar in the world — including in Georgia. Interestingly, according to the excavation’s lead archaeologists, modern Ashdod is now home to the largest community of Jews of Georgian origin.

[...]

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When Rice University religion professor Matthias Henze visits local Houston-area churches and synagogues to promote interfaith understanding between Christianity and Judaism, he focuses on discussing one particular time period: the four-to-five-century gap between the Old and New Testaments.

Turkey’s Syriac minority in Mardin province welcomes the imminent return of legal ownership of the Mor Gabriel Monastery to their community, a monastery official told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.

Deputy Prime Minister Hakan Cavusoglu said earlier that an Assyrian Christian cemetery belonging to the monastery had been mistakenly transferred to the state treasury.

"We are now transferring this cemetery back to its owners," Cavusoglu added.

[...]

This is prospectively good news. I will call it actual good news as soon as there is word that the return has been fully effected. I appreciate the efforts of the Turkish Government to get this one right. I trust that they will be similarly attentive to the related property issues that remain to be resolved. The world is watching.

"Moreover take thou up a lamentation for the princess of Israel, And say, What is thy mother? A lioness: she lay down among lions, she nourished her whelps among young lions." Ezekiel 19:1-2

Some people wouldn't notice an elephant statue in the room. Others glance at a pile of dirt and see ancient carvings of cats. That's how archaeologists found a relief of a lioness carved on a basalt rock weighing 600 kilograms (1320 pounds) at el-Araj, which may or may not have been the site of Bethsaida, in the Galilee.

The carving probably dates to around the 4th to 6th century C.E., says Dr. Mordechai Aviam, director of excavations at the Kinneret Academic College in the Galilee.

[...]

For the controversy over whether el-Araj was ancient Bethsaida-Julias, see here, here, here, and links

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Published in German.
In many respects, the Maccabean period represents a bench mark for the formative phase as well as for ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Alongside the political significance of an independent state in Hellenistic times, there belongs the paradigmatic developments of the complex intertwining of ethnos and confession in Judaism, the establishment of the Torah and the Bible as binding text corpora, and the emergence of religious institutions and parties. In the field of theology, discourses on the Maccabean period had a decisive effect on Jewish and Christian eschatology, martyrology and soteriology. This volume makes the first attempt at providing a complete overview of this epoch from a variety of angles. In thematically ordered interdisciplinary groups, proven experts synchronously consider contemporary events and literature, and take a diachronic look at the far-reaching reception of the Maccabean books and their time.

The articles are in German and English. Follow the link for the full TOC.

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Charles Gieschen demonstrates that angel and angel-related traditions, especially those built upon the so-called "Angel of the Lord" figure in the Hebrew Bible, had a profound impact upon the origin, development, and shape of early Christian claims about Jesus. Gieschen's book falls neatly into two halves. The first catalogues the various antecedents for Angelomorphic Christology -- Jewish speculation about principal angels, mediator figures, and related phenomena -- with chapters on “An Angelomorphic God”, “Angelomorphic Divine Hypostases” (including the Divine Name, the Divine Glory, Wisdom, the Word, the Spirit and Power), Principal Named Angels, and Angelomorphic Humans. The book's second half examines the evidence for Angelomorphic Christology in early Christian literature. This portion begins with a brief overview of the principal Angel and Angelomorphic Christology from Justin to Nicea and then examines in turn the Pseudo-Clementines, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Revelation of John, the Fourth Gospel, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Pauline Corpus. Gieschen argues that Christian use of the angelomorphic tradition did not spawn a new and variant kind of Christology, one that competed with accepted belief about Jesus for early Christians' favour, but instead shows how Christians adapted an already variegated Jewish tradition to weave a single story about a common Lord.

Another in Baylor's new Library of Early Christology reprint series, on which more here and here and links.

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This week, Daf Yomi readers completed the second chapter of Tractate Makkot, a short section of the Talmud that deals with non-capital crimes. The subject of this chapter was what American law calls involuntary manslaughter: What happens to someone who accidentally kills another person? Clearly, he cannot be convicted of murder under Jewish law, because we learned in Tractate Sanhedrin, a murderer is only guilty if he is forewarned by two witnesses that he is about to commit a capital crime. But does this mean that an unintentional killer suffers no consequences at all?

To Rabbi Dr. Julia Watts Belser, an expert in both Judaic studies and disability studies, being knowledgeable about multiple fields provides a unique opportunity to combine and compare disciplines; she analyzes each field in light of the other.

On Tuesday, the annual Jewish Studies Colloquium convened to hear Watts Belser, assistant professor of Jewish Studies at Georgetown University, and to discuss her ongoing work.

Introduced as someone whose scholarship “is a constant reminder of our intellectual, moral and emotional responsibility to break down barriers,” Watts Belser presented briefly on her new project, which attendees had read in advance. The project, an essay titled “Disciplining the Dissident Body: Disability, Gender, and State Violence in Rabbinic Literature,” discusses three “rabbinic stories” — Jewish theological tales — and their physical and symbolic portrayals of disability.

[...]

I noted a review of a book by Dr. Belser here and an essay by her at AJR here.

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The biblical narrative may have gone overboard on extolling the virtues of the two kings, but a preponderance of evidence indicates that some kind of powerful polity did rule from Jerusalem. One of the best arguments is the massive copper production during the 10th century B.C.E., at Timna, three hundred kilometers south of Jerusalem.

Mountains of slag

There, in the dry desert, Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University has spent 14 years excavating copper mining and smelting sites of Jordan and Israel, dating to the 10th century B.C.E. The mines in the Aravah valley are in the very territory the Bible says David won from the Edomites, who then became subject to Israel (2 Samuel 8:13-14).

This article is especially interested in the "minimalist-maximalist" debate about whether and to what degree the Hebrew Bible tells us any useful historical information about the so-called United Monarchy. I am more interested in the article's detailed coverage of the Timna Valley excavation. Lots of organic material from the 10th century BCE has been excavated there. This leads me to hope that someday the excavators may recover scroll fragments there from the same period. It's a long shot, but we'll see.

Background on the many fascinating discoveries in the Timna Valley excavation is here and follow the links.

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Very exciting news came out of a session at the 2017 annual Society of Biblical Literature conference in Boston: Geoff Smith and Brent Landau announced their discovery of the first known Greek fragments of the First Apocalypse of James, a Coptic text known from a Nag Hammadi codex (Codex V) and the famous Codex Tchacos. This early Christian text consists of a dialogue between Jesus and James the brother of Jesus. Scholars have argued that this Coptic text was probably translated from Greek, but until now, no Greek witnesses have been known to exist.

[...]

Very exciting indeed. Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

Cross-file under New Testament Apocrypha Watch.

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The introductory chapter situates the book within a number of scholarly debates: the debate on Jewish or Judean identity within the Mediterranean world (is it primarily ethnic or primarily religious, or does it evolve from the one into the other?), the debate on the legal status of the Judeans within the Roman empire and the question how conflictual the relationship between Judeans and other inhabitants of the Roman empire was on a social level. Scholars generally acknowledge the relatively large degree of freedom accorded in a number of decrees to Judeans to live according to their ancestral customs,1 but disagree about the extent to which they could actually participate in Greco-Roman society without getting involved in various kinds of cultural conflict.2

This volume contributes to these debates by collecting a number of essays by leading scholars in the field. The strengths of the book are its detailed attention to the ancient sources and its wide chronological and geographical scope, ranging from the speeches of Cicero to the Judean community of Cologne in the fourth century. However, the book as a whole fails to move forward on the debates mentioned above, both because a number of the contributors have already presented their views in more detail in earlier publications and because the book lacks a concluding chapter that could bring the various contributions together to answer the questions posed in the introduction. Still, the quality of the individual papers is generally high in its argumentative strength and adequate use of the evidence. I cannot discuss all papers in detail, but will highlight some of them.

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RELIGION PROF BLOG: Fan Fiction and Ancient Scribal Cultures #CFP (James McGrath). The comparison seems anachronistic to me, but it will be very interesting to see what this special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures produces.

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Analyses of 33 newly excavated skeletons of people buried at the West Bank site, Qumran, supports a view that the community consisted of a religious sect of celibate men. Anthropologist Yossi Nagar of the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem presented the findings November 16 at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Preliminary radiocarbon dating of one of the Qumran bones indicates that the interred bodies are around 2,200 years old — close to the same age as the ancient texts, which are estimated to have been written between around 150 B.C. and A.D. 70.

Plus, reexamination of 53 previously unearthed human skeletons from Qumran’s cemetery, now housed in France, found that six of seven individuals formerly tagged as women were actually men, Nagar said. A small number of children have also been excavated at Qumran.

[...]

The skeletons excavated at Qumran have been controversial for quite some time, mainly because analysis of them is so difficult. These latest results are interesting and could be important for our understanding of the site of Qumran and even for our understanding of the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls — if the results are upheld in peer-review publication. Cross-file under Technology Watch.

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The museum celebrates Jews and Judaism as the noble, beloved and even feared antecedents to Christianity, and argues that its best modern expression is in the State of Israel. And it makes the case that the Bible is not merely to be studied but to be believed.

Speaking at the dedication Friday, Steven Green, the president of Hobby Lobby and the museum’s chairman of the board, said museumgoers should come away realizing that the Bible “has had a positive impact on their lives in so many different ways and when they leave they will be inspired to open it.”

It especially celebrates the Bible’s Jewish origins, notably those made manifest in modern Israel. The dedication included a rabbi, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, the Israeli minister of tourism and the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

At times, the event seemed like a pro-Israel gala. Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, celebrated the museum as a signifier of the Jewish claim to Jerusalem. The Bible nurtured Jews through 2,000 years of exile until they were able to “rebuild the original DC — David’s Capital,” he said.

This review is basically positive, but not without criticisms.

Background on the Museum of the Bible, Hobby Lobby, and the Green Collection, is here and follow the many links.

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Widely respected Biblical scholar David Trobisch now directs the collection—and the Museum of the Bible has supported the very work on the Dead Sea Scrolls which has uncovered evidence of forgery.

“Anybody who thinks that in a gigantic museum that there’s going to be no item [with disputed authenticity], it’s like believing that there’s no amoeba in your water,” says New York University Biblical scholar Lawrence Schiffman, who consulted the museum on its presentation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. “The museum did everything they’re supposed to do.”

Regular readers of PaleoJudaica will be familiar with most of what is covered in this article. But the article assembles the information conveniently in one place.

Background on those dubious Dead Sea Scrolls fragments is here and links. Background on the Museum of the Bible, Hobby Lobby, and the Green Collection, is here and many links.

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The ancient ship was discovered in 1985. It lay 70 meters from the shore, its bow pointing landward, at a depth of about two meters, under a layer of sand of similar thickness. Dr. Elisha Linder, a marine archaeologist from the University of Haifa, was in charge of researching the unique find. The quantity of wood used in the ship’s construction, and its quality, together with the precise dating, reflected the ship’s importance. Its one-armed anchor was the first of its type to be found whole. It took a full 15 years for the vessel to be lifted out of the water, dismantled, preserved and reassembled. It’s now a fine exhibit in the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa. The findings on display, which constitute about a third of the original ship, were the foundation for the construction of the replica.

In the past three years, Prof. Yaacov Kahanov of Haifa University’s Department of Maritime Civilizations, a world expert in the study of ancient ships, led the initiative to build the replica. The resulting full-scale ship, constructed using methods that were in use in the Mediterranean around 400 BCE, is faithful to the original. Kahanov passed away just before the work was completed.

(Stop and read this premium article now, before it goes behind the subscription wall.)

The excavators think the ship was likely crewed by Greeks rather than Phoenicians. Background to the story is here and here.

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